| Author | Message | ||
  Lex |
Well, here it is a week later and I'm still using Van Gogh paints for color sketches. Gotta admit, I like the stuff for noncritical work. The colors are nice and mix predictably. The chalkiness I criticized in my previous post isn't a factor in these preliminary sketches, but the final versions will be done in Schmincke watercolors (at least until I fall in lust with some other brand, and most of us know how that goes J). And the Van Gogh stuff mixes, blends and behaves on paper very much like Schmincke, which makes the transition simpler from color sketch to final piece. I've squeezed about half a tube of each of the six colors I bought (ultramarine, phthalo blue, azo yellow light, quinacridone rose, viridian, burnt sienna) into a folding portable palette box. Very handy for the quickie stuff I'm doing. Because I've noticed certain yellows and browns tend to dry hard and be difficult to rewet I added a tiny drop of glycerin to each well and mixed it in roughly with a palette knife. I've used the paints daily since then so the paints haven't really had a chance to harden, but I'm betting they won't. So, if my earlier criticism seemed a bit harsh keep in mind that I was taking a no-compromises viewpoint and only the very best examples of each particular brand of artist quality paint would pass such scrutiny. In reality, the Van Gogh paints are perfectly acceptable for color sketches when one is trying to work out a composition before committing to large sheets of expensive paper. I plan to keep using mine. | ||
Lex |
There's a particularly nasty chalky splotch on the bottle, visible in this view:  Unfortunately this chalky tendency in the four or five tubes of Van Gogh I've tried makes it unsuitable for anything other than beginner's paint (it is easy to work with as the consistency is the same from one tube to the next) or for rough tone value color sketches. I can't recommend it as a child's paint, tho', since some pigments are potentially toxic (as with any serious paint). However it would be suitable for an older child or teen who is mature enough to understand the hazards and how to protect herself through careful hygeine. Under the circumstances I'll stick to recommending Sakura Koi (if you don't mind having to buy the entire kit of something like 18 tubes), all of which have proven to be very good in my experience (and as I write this I'm hoping Sakura hasn't reformulated the paint and ruined it!); or, for a bit more money, Winsor & Newton's Cotman line. The Cotmans don't have the same consistency from tube to tube (my tubes of ultramarine, hooker's green and burnt umber, for example, became rock hard in the tube within a year and are quite difficult to rewet once dried on the palette - a drop of glycerin helps, tho') but this is probably because W&N doesn't add too much filler or other additives in the pursuit of the same buttery texture in every tube. That's probably commendable, but beginners should be forewarned. | ||
Lex |
The accidental inclusion of a few strokes of Van Gogh rose quinacridone in a piece done otherwise entirely in Sakura Koi nearly ruined the piece. I painted this nonstill life of a dancing bottle and wine glass Friday morning and didn't notice until that afternoon that, when dry, the Van Gogh rose q. produced a chalky haze over most of the "wine":  | ||
Lex |
Hi, Neffi. Most of us probably have tried something like Prang pan watercolors or Niji semi-liquid in those little plastic squeezy tubes before moving up. But we pretend we haven't and don't talk about it. I figure the intermediate grade paints like Van Gogh, Sakura's Koi and others are worth talking about. Lots of other new painters are going to come along wanting to know what it's like to work with these paints. | ||
Neffi |
Lex, thank you for sharing your experiences with these two different brands of paints. There is so little info available re student grade paints. When I started out about a year ago I searched high and low for this kind of info. I am happy that I invested in artist quality paints in the end, for only a fraction more of the cost of student grade paints. Your paintings are lovely! Goes to show that it's really the hand that holds the brush that counts more than the paints or the type of brush. | ||
Lex |
This study was done on precut Stratmore CP (the other study was on Canson Montval CP block). The same colors - rose quinacridone, pthalo blue and ultramarine blue - were used. Also a light, uneven wash of viridian was applied to the upper background. The scanner didn't pick it up very well so the brushstrokes and texture are lost.  | ||
Lex |
Here are a couple of studies of a red glass and blue bottle using Van Gogh watercolors. In this one only rose quinacridone, pthalo blue and ultramarine were used. Some scraping was done to produce highlights on the bottle.  | ||
Lex |
In my earlier thread regarding Sakura Koi watercolor paints someone recommended Van Gogh paints, an equivalently priced ("student" grade) line from Talens. I've since bought a few tubes - viridian, ultramarine, pthalo blue, rose quinacridone and burnt sienna - and tried them on Arches rough, Strathmore CP precut sheets and Canson Montval CP block, all very different papers. A few observations: The tube paints I tried are consistently creamy and readily soluable. Even after drying on the palette they're easily redissolved in water. In very light coats they're transparent. However the rose q. tends to become a bit chalky when glazed two or three times. The rose q. works best in either a single light coat for a true rose or when applied either more heavily or in more than three coats for a brilliant red. The ultramarine has the usual violet or purplish character but also tends to become chalky when glazed two or three times. The viridian is somewhat chalky in even light applications - perhaps it's more accurate to describe it as opaque. At any rate, it's less annoying than the rose q. or ultramarine, perhaps because I've come to expect premixed greens and oranges not to be transparent. In heavier applications the viridian was quite nice to work with - tho' admittedly that's my highly subjective opinion - becoming an appealing, brilliant green with slight bluish tendencies. The chalkiness of those particular paints was most noticeable on Strathmore CP precut sheets and Canson Montval CP blocks, neither of which is a particular good paper for my technique (I work very wet, loose and mooshy). Those papers force me to work in a fussy, detail-oriented fashion to get suitable results. On Arches rough, which I cut from a full size sheet, all the Van Gogh paints were very cooperative with my preferred style. And just to challenge myself in an effort to ensure I wasn't conciously or unconciously biasing the results, I painted a couple of seascapes in my usual fashion - very wet and mooshy - and painted one Monet-style waterlily scene with lots of glazes and heavy application of pigment. Both look pretty good (I'm speaking of how the paper and paint get along together, not of the merits of my work) with little or no chalkiness. The pthalo blue stains predictably - a characteristic I like since I use staining colors directly against the paper and want the shapes to remain clear after repeated glazes or washes - and remains a distinctly lighter violet/purplish blue than the ultramarine, even when applied heavily. That's a plus. It never seems chalky on the papers I've tried. And the burnt sienna is familiar and quite satisfactory. It behaves just as you'd expect - no chalkiness, reasonably transparent in light coats, attaining a nice deeper color in heavier applications. And it's very useful mixed with blues for getting deeper greens. I wasn't able to get useful oranges or grays from it, tho', but didn't work very long at that - perhaps with practice it can be done. Mixing rose q. and ultramarine produced nice purples, tho' they tended to be chalky in heavy applications on my Strathmore and Canson Montval papers (less so on Arches). There was less chalkiness mixing rose q. with pthalo blue. I'm betting the chalkiness is due to the filler used, which is unavoidable in an inexpensive, student grade paint. At $2.49 per 10ml tube locally - and CJAS sells 'em much cheaper in quantity - it's a good buy. Also, unlike Koi, Van Gogh tubes are marked with the actual pigments. Some are single pigments, others are mixed. Overall I still prefer Sakura Koi paints. The only truly chalky color is their pale orange, which I find quite useful for specific purposes - stylized nudes, backgrounds and filling in on top of prepainted areas like leaves and stems. It behaves more as a staining opaque paint and, due to the nature of the color, the chalkiness is never disturbing to my eyes. I also like the fact that Koi paints can be applied for an effect like gouache - repeated or heavier applications produce a pleasing depth that, in my experience, is not subject to cracking, peeling or powdering. Koi paints are also available in some pretty brilliant colors which, admittedly, are difficult to rate for lightfastness. My favorites among these are sky blue, chrome yellow and chrome green. Even if they turn out not to be lightfast I'd still be inclined to use them rather than designers gouache if I were still doing graphic design or something similar simply because the Koi is so much easier to work with than Winsor & Newton designer gouache, in my experience. Most of the Koi paints rewet easily after drying on the palette. A few notable exceptions, tho': pale orange, ultramarine and Van Dyke brown. Those, frankly, are damned difficult to redissolve and require some sort of wetting agent to avoid scrubbing one's brushes to pieces. And Koi's ultramarine and Van Dyke brown have become quite thick and difficult to squeeze out of the tubes I've had for a few years. Naturally only time will tell whether comparable student grade paints will exhibit similar traits. Some of my W&N Cotman tubes have done the same so I expect this is a characteristic of certain pigments. Between the Cotman, Koi and Van Gogh paints I'd recommend the Koi first, Van Gogh second and Cotman third. IMHO if one is going to pay the higher price for W&N paints it makes more sense to go whole hog and buy their artist grade stuff - to me, their Cotman line just isn't a very good bargain for those of us who are at that developmental stage where we'll benefit more from painting often and in quantity. I'll worry about absolute lightfastness later. Just a personal opinion, of course, but I prefer to buy paints with great working characteristics that are either less expensive or come in larger tubes - but I don't want to waste money on frustrating junk either. Like most of us I'm skeptical of so-called bargains but always welcome a great value. Again, keep in mind this is a very limited, personal opinion of only the working characteristics of Van Gogh, Koi and Cotman paints - not of lightfastness or similar critical traits. And I haven't tried similar value paints from CJAS or others...yet. ;) I'm reluctant to post examples of these recent pieces only because I don't know whether it's appropriate to clutter up the forum with large graphics, and fairly large images would be required to notice the characteristics I've described. Looks like it's time for me to finally update my website. |
